Not the Onion: EU official used colorful, simplified cue cards to explain trade issues to Trump

[MelissaB]

Link to tweet

Wall Street Journal: EU official used colorful, simplified cue cards in trade meeting with Trump

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reportedly used colorful cards with simple explanations to discuss trade policies during his Wednesday meeting with President Trump.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Juncker relied on more than a dozen of the cards while explaining trade topics to Trump, including automotive trade, ahead of their Rose Garden announcement to hold formal trade talks.

“We knew this wasn’t an academic seminar. It had to be very simple,” a senior European Union official told The Journal.

More: http://thehill.com/policy/finance/international-taxes/399042-eu-official-used-colorful-simplified-cue-cards-to-explain?__twitter_impression=true&__twitter_impression=true&__twitter_impression=true

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. How embarrassing.

"OK, Mr. President, here's how it works. See this card? This is Jimmy. Jimmy lives in America and he builds cars. This card here is a picture of the cars Jimmy builds. Jimmy would like to sell more cars, but some mean people in Germany send their hoity-toity cars, like the BMW on this next card, to America and sometimes people buy them instead of Jimmy's cars. Isn't that terrible?

So what you do, Mr. President, to make Jimmy happy, is put a tariff on those nasty German cars when those nasty Germans send them to America! Do you know what a tariff is? It's a kind of a tax that makes those cars more expensive, and then people would buy Jimmy's cars instead. Isn't that nice? Here's a picture of Angela Merkel. She looks sad because those tariffs make Americans buy fewer German cars.

What is mean, sad Angela going to do? Why, she gets together with her friends at the EU and they do tariffs on things they import from America! Here's a picture of a soybean. And here's a picture of natural gas. There's nothing on the card because you can't see natural gas. But now, because of these tariffs, America's soy beans and natural gas are more expensive and the Europe people won't buy them. Farmers in America - here is a picture of a farmer - will be sad even though Jimmy the car maker is happy."

"What are you going to do now? Here is a quiz. You have 10 minutes to answer the questions."

1. If there are more farmers than car manufacturers in America, will you lift the car tariffs? What if there are more car manufacturers than farmers?

2. If the car tariffs make Angela Merkel sad, will you keep them even if Ivanka wants to buy an Audi?

3. Do you think Russian cars should be included in the tariffs? Why or why not?

4. Would you consider funding technology that would make it possible to make cars out of soy beans?

5. Beans cause gas. Should soy beans be used to make natural gas?


"Time's up... Oh, didn't you answer any of them? Would you like to look at the cards again?"

[Chris Studio]

2. competence

It's amazing how useful it can be.

[Ilsa]

3. Oh rats! I wanted to see pix of the cards.

Then I could suggest to some fourth grade teachers that they use them.

[marylandblue]

4. Picture of the card they used

The US economy:

[Wounded Bear]

5. Remember Philadelphia...